That MacDonald West building sticks so much further up from the roofline of the other buildings, it reminds me of Vietnam or something. It just looks odd.

Or maybe Japan. I'd accept that comparison. All it needs is a little penthouse set back from the front with a nice rooftop garden and some signage on the side.

Really its exciting to see that form of building as infill in American cities, even if it has replaced something else. We've had so much full-block upscale condo buildings, but what made downtowns in the golden years was how every little lot could support a multi-story building.

It could be years before the question is answered with any degree of certainty. Still, investments in Old Town are adding up, hinting at a future that doesn’t rely solely on social service agencies that dot the district or its reputation for drug-related crime.

The University of Oregon moved to Old Town in 2006. Mercy Corps made Old Town its headquarters a short time later. The Portland Development Commission calls it home. The Max light rail line traverses the neighborhood.

The city of Portland teamed with affordable housing advocates to install the Bud Clark Commons residential project near Union Station. Even the train station has a new roof and a few other upgrades befitting its iconic status.

The Oregon College of Oriental Medicine , the Pacific Northwest College of Art and Pensole Footwear Design Academy have or will soon join the University of Oregon near the North Park Blocks in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood.

The latest arrivals will add more than 1,000 college students and hundreds of instructors and staff members to an overlooked neighborhood on downtown’s northern edge.

It’s “absolutely” good news, said Paul Verhoeven, executive director of the Portland Saturday Market and co-chair of the Old Town Chinatown Neighborhood Association’s land use committee.

...

Enter the 511 Building. Four years ago, the U.S. General Services Administration awarded the historic building to PNCA under a program that donates surplus property to schools.

The federal law enforcement agencies that used the building have slowly been moving out. When the last one leaves this year, PNCA will invest some $30 million to transform the dreary-looking structure.

PNCA will likely sell its current building in the Pearl District.

Thanks to new arrivals such as OCOM and PNCA and others, the North Park Blocks and Old Town are at a tipping point, said Scott Andrews, chairman of the Portland Development Commission and president of Melvin Mark Property Management Co. Cos.

The Pacific Northwest College of Art tossed a number of pebbles in the water back in 2008. Today, the waves those pebbles launched are at the forefront of redevelopment that is reshaping Old Town Chinatown and the North Park Blocks.

Back in 2008, PNCA's scholarly President Thomas Manley and the art school's board, closed two major real estate deals, one in the Pearl District and the other in Old Town.

PNCA paid $10.5 million for the Pearl District building that serves as its anchor at 1241 N.W. Johnson St. in October. About the same time, it secured the historic U.S. Post Office building, 511 N.W. Broadway, in Old Town from the federal General Services Administration under a program that gives surplus buildings away if they’re used for educational purposes.

...

Come 2014 or thereabouts, PNCA will make the historic post office (aka 511 Building) its new home once it completes a roughly $30 million renovation. It will likely sell the Pearl District building at that point.

Once it started viewing Old Town as its future, the pieces fell into place.

PNCA already has a presence there through the Museum of Contemporary Craft, which fronts the park blocks at Northwest Davis Street. In the future, it will have student housing too, thanks to a partnership with the Powell family to develop apartments at the former Powells Technical Books, 33 N.W. Park Ave.

Am I missing something in this article? Why exactly is the project stalled? Why go so far (can't be cheap) to have cast-iron pieces reconstructed but then say that the neighborhood "isn't ready" for it yet? And how can the renovation be a catalyst for redevelopment if it can't happen until more of the parking lots are filled in?

Weirdly enough, I rode by this building today before seeing this article, and took some shots of it. They're below the article.

Also, note that the misguided plan to slap old pieces of cast iron on modern (but surely faux historic in style) buildings is still very much alive.

First cast-iron restoration project could spur more redevelopment in Old Town
POSTED: Tuesday, June 5, 2012 at 02:50 PM PT
BY: Lindsey O'Brien, DJC
Tags: Hallock and McMillan Building

Bill Larsell, a craftsman with Architectural Castings Inc., stands with one of four cast-iron columns he helped reproduce for the Hallock and McMillan Building in Portland's Old Town neighborhood. (Photo by Sam Tenney/DJC)

In November, a small cross section of Portland’s building industry gathered in a dark, smoky foundry to witness a rare execution of modern cast-iron craftsmanship.

Workers at the Silverton Foundry recreated pieces of the cast-iron facade of Portland’s oldest building. According to several of the experts working on the restoration of the Hallock and McMillan Building, it was the first time in modern history that the process was used to cast large sections of a building’s facade entirely in iron. Though many preservationists consider the project an exciting step in the right direction, the restoration is stalled until the neighborhood is developed more fully.

At the foundry, cranes swooped overhead, bringing molten iron from a tall, cylindrical furnace to custom molds that were created based on historic photographs of the 155-year-old Hallock and McMillan Building. The firms carrying out the project – Emerick Architects, Architectural Castings Inc. and Bremik Construction – all sent representatives to the Silverton Foundry to witness the unique recreation of the historic facade.

“It seemed ancient as all get-out,” said architect and cast-iron expert Bill Hawkins, who was a consultant for the project. “(The building) will once again look as it did when its architects designed and built it.”

After housing an electronics business for many years, the Hallock and McMillan Building was purchased in 2010 by John Russell, founder of Russell Development Co. He then assembled a group of experts to restore the building’s cast-iron facade with full-iron replicas.

“It’s a long process and you can’t hurry it,” Russell said. “You have to plan for six months of preparation work, but it’s absolutely worth it.”

Several experts needed nearly a year to design and prepare the molds. The Silverton Foundry then fashioned a series of cast-iron ornamental pieces and seven-foot columns to replace the originals, which were removed in the 1940s and then lost.

The casting process employed basically the same techniques that would have been used when the building was constructed in 1857, according to David Field, who owns the foundry with his brother George.

“It’s a craft that is pretty rare, and the knowledge of the foundry men is really, really critical,” said Dave Talbott, president of Architectural Castings Inc., a Portland firm that helped develop drawings and molds for the foundry. “It would be tough to do without the aggregate knowledge of these guys.”

Russell, who owns multiple cast-iron buildings in Portland’s Skidmore/Old Town Historic District, said he will not install the recently cast pieces on the Hallock and McMillan Building until the area is improved.

“The neighborhood is just not ready for it; there are too many empty parking lots,” he said.

However, this recent effort to restore the Hallock and McMillan Building, which is located at the corner of Southwest Naito Parkway and Oak Street, may influence future redevelopment of the area.

“We need to rehabilitate the resources we have left and infill the missing pieces (of the district) that right now are surface parking lots,” said Peggy Moretti, executive director of the Historic Preservation League of Oregon. The HPLO recently listed the Skidmore/Old Town district on its 2012 list of Oregon’s most endangered places.

The Hallock and McMillan Building originally had the kind of showy, cast-iron frontage that defined Portland in its early days. But many of the building’s cast-iron neighbors have been torn down, and an unclear vision for the district has stalled redevelopment.

“The whole district is in a gridlock,” Moretti said. “Tackling that poor, pathetic-looking building represents what the district used to be and can be again.”

A new Skidmore/Old Town task force is gearing up to tackle some of the district’s ongoing development issues. But Hawkins and other preservationists have already made it clear that they hope that the city’s stockpile of salvaged cast iron will be used to rebuild the Skidmore/Old Town area. The same process used for the Hallock and McMillan project could be used to recast the missing pieces.

“I hope (the project) will trigger a little renaissance for our historic district,” Hawkins said. “If the area is going to be reborn, it should be done in iron.”

^I'm with you on this one. That statement is a real head scratcher. I wonder why the reporter's initial reaction wasn't to question why go through the expense of creating the mold, casting the pieces, and then deciding the neighborhood hasn't come far enough to renovate the building.

A local hotelier is looking to revive a historic hotel in downtown Portland.

Ganesh Sonpatki, the private owner of several economy hotels in Portland, is planning to renovate and re-open the long vacant Harlow Block building, at 722-738 N.W. Glisan St., as a mid-ranged priced hotel. With its opening, Sonpatki will become the latest in a long line of hoteliers at the site.

The Harlow Block was built in 1882 for entrepreneur and city of Troutdale founder Capt. John Harlow. Harlow was originally a sea captain from Maine who came to Oregon by accident in 1849 when he landed in San Francisco and his crew jumped ship to join the California Gold Rush.

Harlow had to sell his ship but ended up becoming a successful steamboat operator. Eventually he made his way up to Oregon where he established a country farm he called “Troutdale” because of the fish ponds he built on the property.

Harlow built the hotel in downtown Portland hoping to capitalize on the coming transcontinental railroad station just blocks away. He was a bit ahead of his time in his plan to include retail shop space on the ground floor of the building. Unfortunately for him, he died a year after the building’s opening from a random illness and his wife, Celeste Harlow, managed the property for many years.

In 1902, Celeste sold the building, and its name was changed to the Park Hotel. In 1907, it sold again and became the Muckle Building. The building struggled through the first part of the 19th century as it scrambled to incorporate amenities like electricity and central heating, and went through several more iterations throughout the 19th century. By the 1970s, it had become fairly worn down.

Despite being neglected, the Harlow Block has an attractive façade that features a restrained Italianate style with old, red brick masonry and arcuated fenestration. Sonpatki bought the building in 2008 with plans to renovate it, but the crashing economy delayed the project. A few years ago, however, he renovated the Downtown Value Inn near Portland State University and said the success of that project clearly indicated the economy was coming around.

“It’s been good,” Sonpatki said. “It could always be better with the economy that we have built. We’re definitely getting a lot of tourists coming in … but it’s been good and that’s what we’re trying to replicate over here.”

Sonpatki’s other hotels include the Briarwood Suites at Southeast 77th and Powell and the Banfield Value Inn at Northeast 37th and Sandy Boulevard.

A big challenge for the renovation will be modernizing the building without triggering a seismic upgrade, which wouldn’t be economically feasible as a mid-ranged hotel. Sonpatki said he originally had approval from Best Western to fly that banner at the Harlow Block but the company wanted some changes made that would have triggered seismic improvements.

“It’s hard to put a whole bunch of money into a building that small, especially with our focus not being on the high-end market,” Sonpatki said. “The plan is to make it as safe as possible but as lean as possible.”

Sonpatki is currently going through permitting for the project.

And with the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s coming renovation of the former federal post office, at 511 N.W. Broadway, just across the street and the soon-to-be construction of a new dormitory for PNCA a couple blocks away, the area around the Harlow Block is certainly primed for activity.

“It’s a great location just from the standpoint of being in the Pearl district,” Sonpatki said, “and in terms of not having a lot of hotels out there.”

A quick googling reveals Sonpatki to be the owner of a Motel 6 - hopefully this is a step up.

also:

Quote:

The applicant is seeking Historic Design Review approval for a proposal for rehabilitation work
on the Harlow Block, a Historic Landmark. The proposal includes:
• restoration of existing and altered historic storefronts to the condition demonstrated by
a 1909 photograph;
• alteration of an existing, minor, side entry door and transom, including a new canopy,
to provide an accessible entry; and
• new tenant signs within the traditional sign band of the NW Glisan Street façade, and
new building identification signs on the two side walls.

I've always liked that building too and have pretty much just been waiting for it to be torn down because it has been so neglected.

I am surprised that they can get away with not doing the seismic upgrade, despite there being no change of use. It has to be un-reinforced masonry, right? Not the sort of place I'd want to be when the big one hits...

I've always liked that building too and have pretty much just been waiting for it to be torn down because it has been so neglected.

I am surprised that they can get away with not doing the seismic upgrade, despite there being no change of use. It has to be un-reinforced masonry, right? Not the sort of place I'd want to be when the big one hits...

Then you don't want to be near most of the old buildings in downtown, there are so many buildings in the city that haven't been reinforced. I know the hotels on Broadway all un-reinforced because the renovations done to a number of those buildings were all cosmetic.